Thanks to the income generated by an Asian Development Bank project, Khaleda Begum (right) was able to pay for the marriage of her two daughters: the burden of dowry payments is a major source of poverty in Bangladesh.

The question grid computing may help answer, by modeling the impact of investments like this ADB project, is how to invest most efficiently to alleviate poverty throughout a whole region like northwest Bangladesh.

Up to now, the amount of simulations required — and the large number of ‘agents’ needed for each run — has made this a massive computing challenge.

However, it is one that is ideally suited to cluster-based grid computing, writes our Asia correspondent.